The Colorado Rockies often feel residual effects of playing home games at Coors Field. / Chris Humphreys, USA TODAY Sports

by Ted Berg, USA TODAY Sports

by Ted Berg, USA TODAY Sports

Upon the announcement of his hiring as Colorado Rockies manager, Walt Weiss said he had a "strong perspective on what the game is like at altitude," and said he would like the club to "embrace it as a home-field advantage."

A former Rockies shortstop that the organization hired away from a Denver-area high school despite no professional managerial experience, Weiss is merely the latest in a long line of club officials aiming to turn their unique - and inescapable - circumstances into an advantage.

Or, at the least, less of a liability.

"I want them to understand and be aware of some of the advantages of playing there â?? the vulnerability of the opposing pitcher in particular," Weiss said.

That process begins today, when the Rockies play their 2013 home opener after a 2012 season that was in many ways historically bad.

The Rockies finished last in baseball with a 5.22 ERA, nearly a half-run higher than the 29th-ranked team. In midseason, the club switched to a four-man rotation with relievers piggybacked on the same days, limiting starters to 75 pitches to minimize their ability to self-inflict damage.

Pitching coach Bob Apodaca resigned in June, and manager Jim Tracy did the same after the season. And in the front office, general manager Dan O'Dowd relinquished influence in favor of assistant Bill Geivett.

Enter Weiss, who knows there's much more to winning at altitude than demoralizing opposing pitchers. Especially when you're the club playing there 81 games a year.

"It's hard to recover," said shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. "I've never played anywhere else, so I don't have anything to compare it to. But I know guys come in breathing a little bit different, and I know people playing there for the first time notice a bit of a difference as well."

Perhaps no one understands the environment better than first baseman Todd Helton, who has appeared in nearly 1,000 more games for the Rockies than anyone else in franchise history.

"I should be manager," Helton joked.

If the altitude merely inflated scoring at Coors Field, the Rockies could simply adjust their expectations for pitchers and the way they assess players' home-road splits. But the club has struggled to build a consistent winner, fielding teams with more than 83 wins only twice in its 20-year-history.

"You have to take care of your body a little more," Helton said. "You're definitely more sore. I find that I'm a lot more sore there. I don't know the scientific reason for it."

A 2012 panel put together by the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission studied the effects of altitude on athletes and determined that "decreased barometric pressure at altitude reduces air density and the partial pressure of inspired oxygen," which "impairs maximum aerobic capacity and endurance performance in sports."

"Maximum strength and power are not affected by altitude, yet repeated bouts of high-intensity efforts may be more affected," reads the report, as published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. "Since projectile motion is altered by reduced air density, specific skills requiring precise timing, accuracy and position may be adversely affected."

A 1996 study published in the International Journal of Biometeorology suggested that exposure to diminished air pressure and oxygen levels at higher altitudes lowered the median power of muscles in test subjects, a condition that was not immediately rectified when the subjects descended to lower altitudes (it should be noted that the test subjects were exposed to altitudes far higher than the one at which the Rockies play). The IOC report recommends athletes spend two weeks acclimating to a higher elevation before competing there.

The Rockies do not have a homestand lasting more than 10 days in 2013.

Weiss, who played four seasons for the Rockies in the mid-'90s, knows he'll have to carefully manage his players to prevent that fatigue.

"We'll try to be smart," he said. "We need our horses out there to win games, so we want them on the field. But there's a delicate balance there. We need to look at the big picture too so we can have them out there for the bulk of the season."

"I tell them, 'just look at me, and one day you're going to end up looking like this," Helton said. "So you're (screwed)."